Jesse Ventura Packs His Trunks

Published: June 20, 2002

Gov. Jesse Ventura of Minnesota, as everyone knows, used to be a professional wrestler -- a job in which the athletes change their persona constantly. The heroic champion on Monday may be a masked demon on Wednesday. So this week, when Mr. Ventura announced he would not run for a second term, it was easy to wonder if he was just preparing to morph into a new identity. The governor, who once famously called organized religion ''a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people,'' has never really tried life as a compassionate conservative. There's still time.

Governors almost never become household names unless they decide to run for president. (Mario Cuomo thought about running for president so long that he became a sort of honorary candidate.) But Jesse Ventura was a national celebrity from the moment he won office in 1998, with 37 percent of the vote in a three-way race. His victory was seen as a sign that voters were bored with regular politicians. What never occurred to anyone is that an entertainer like Mr. Ventura might find politics boring, too. Certainly the state's $2 billion deficit has taken some of the fun out of the game, and the governor's approval ratings are now in the low 40's. When the Minneapolis paper reported that his son Tyrel had been throwing rowdy parties in the governor's mansion, Mr. Ventura threw in the towel, citing a need to ''protect my family.'' The story about Tyrel, which focused heavily on empty wine bottles, did not actually contain revelations likely to crush the spirit of a 22-year-old. Mr. Ventura may have simply discovered that while being a national celebrity is a lot of fun, being a governor is a lot of fights over school budget formulas and what kind of job the ex-highway commissioner deserves.

This year the Legislature, which has taken a bipartisan tactic of ignoring Mr. Ventura, overrode his veto and voted to use the state's reserve funds to fill up the hole in the budget, hoping things will improve by next year. Mr. Ventura now has decided that he doesn't want to be around when next year arrives. While the governor has made some peculiar choices during his term of office -- the stint as color commentator for XFL football comes to mind -- this sounds like smart career planning to us.